“501(c)(6) Gave Millions to Political Groups, Understated Efforts in Application to IRS”

Freedom Partners, a nonprofit organization that raised more than $250 million and provided nearly all of it grants to conservative groups before the 2012 election, told the Internal Revenue Service in an application for tax-exempt status that it expected to raise and spend only $2 million and didn’t “plan to influence any election.”

Freedom Partners actually took in nearly $255 million and provided nearly $236 million in grants in the year that ended just before the Nov. 6, 2012, election, according to its first Form 990 tax return, recently posted online (3599 Money & Politics Report, 9/18/13).